Research News

Jaguar numbers at specific study sites in Central and South America are rising, based on surveys over the past decade and a half by the Wildlife Conservation Society. Elizabeth Bennett,…

Every Antarctic summer between December and January, a group of biologists heads out into the vast wilderness. They do not look for the giant whales or the emperor penguins that…

Saproxylic beetles live in and eat dead and decaying wood, and play important ecological roles in nutrient recycling and pollination, and as an important food source for birds and other…

Making ecotourism pay for local communities while also protecting wildlife has proven a challenge in many parts of the world. Often, the boost in a local economy doesn’t always convince…

A 2007 study estimated that with 40% Amazon deforestation a tipping point could be reached, converting forest to savannah. New factors put that tipping point at 20-25%. Deforestation is now at 17%.

Seemingly nondescript messes of tangled branches and exposed roots, mangrove forests cling to the coasts of many tropical countries. However, mangroves are far from unexceptional, providing critical ecosystem services like…

Scientists in Antarctica recently tested a novel technique to measure the body size and mass of wildlife — aerial photography. The method, used on leopard seals (Hydrurga leptonyx), allows scientists…

Scientists have just described a new species of “pygmy squid” the size of a thumbnail. The tiny marine creature is not a true squid, though. Rather, it belongs to a group…

Study: 142 existing and under construction Andean dams are fragmenting the Amazon, putting ecosystems at risk and impacting up to 30 million people. Another 160 dams are planned.

Scientists know that bats boost the profits of farmers by fertilizing crops and keeping hungry insects in check. According to recent research, they also could clue farmers in to shifting…

For Cambodia’s last remaining Indochinese leopards (Panthera pardus delacouri), extinction could be just around the corner, a new study has found. The only breeding population of this leopard subspecies in Cambodia…

Stone heads loom in the imagination of most people when they think of Easter Island. Known as Rapa Nui to its inhabitants, who also go by the name Rapa Nui…

When it comes to habitat quality and ecosystem services, research has shown that natural landscapes do it best. A new study, published today in Nature, adds fodder to this argument,…

Ahead of a housing development in Panama, an assessor tasked with figuring out how the plans might affect local forests reported that about a dozen species of birds lived in…

Industrial fishing takes place across more than 55 percent of the world’s oceans, according to a new study published in Science. Fishing is vital for food security and livelihoods across…

Deforestation in the tropics is caused by many different human activities that vary in intensity depending on location. In South America, industrial agriculture is the big driver of deforestation while…

What if we had a public library for scientific data? The proliferation of sensors monitoring the Earth—from space to planes, drones, vehicles, park rangers, camera traps, and even animal tracking…

A new study drastically upends conventional wisdom about when plants colonized land, pushing back the date about 80 million years to around half a billion years ago. The new date…

On this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we speak with the co-author of a new book about the minds and lives of animals — their memories, how we know that…

Most conservation projects today must answer a key question: How does the project affect the local people? But high-quality studies that measure the impacts of conservation projects on people’s well-being remain…